Officially Technological

You know how people create legends by telling stories over and over until they've become so amazing and so incredible that they couldn't hardly be called anything but a legend? Well, even though we neither live in a time nor a society where story-telling is necessary to pass information, we still story-tell and we still create legends. Call me cynical, but I listen to people to talk (and sometimes my own self talk) and I hear legends being created. You can tell when story is going to become a legend often by the way that it's told. You know, with the flashlight under your chin, or and lots of adjectives, and facial expressions.

I was recently working at Science Central where they have a high bike (like the one at the circus with a thin track for the bike and a netting underneath). I was manning the high bike when this kid (probably 12ish) came up to ride the bike. He wanted to ride it forwards and backwards, with hands, without hands, again, and again. When I'd kick him off, he'd get back in line and do it all over again.

In my head I could almost hear him talking to his friends at school the following Monday, "Yeah, man, I rode the high bike like 80 times. I even did it without holding on. Nope. It wasn't scary. Only a sissy would be scared." See how we do that? Legends. The next thing you know, his friend is sitting on the bus telling his friends, "Yeah, my friend rode a high bike like 100 times this weekend. He said it was sweet."

I was thinking about this mostly because I just scored half of a desk at work, which is a big deal at Brown Mackie (for an adjunct to get a desk - or even part of a desk). As I, along with several other adjunct faculty members were cheerfully stashing stuff into our newly acquired desk halves, I heard people saying things like, "Now I won't have to carry fifty pounds of books everywhere or use the phone in the lounge (which is one of the noisiest places on earth), and I could hear myself, telling my friends and family, "Back when Brown Mackie didn't give us desks, I would lug around tons of books in my satchel, and I would walk in from the back of the parking lot, and my shoulder would feel like it's about to fall off and....."

Legends.